On Tuesday, Kobach’s team is expected to claim thousands of ineligible citizens have indeed tried to register. He’ll call on a handful of self-proclaimed “experts” who will use surveys and other snake oil to “extrapolate” the number of illegal registrants in Kansas.

Don’t buy it, your honor. Kobach’s documentary proof of citizenship law has always been a distraction, a solution in search of a non-existent problem.

By one estimate, Kansas could show only 25 non-citizens who had illegally registered under the motor voter law before 2013. Kansas had more than 1.7 million registered voters at the time.

At the start of 2017, on the other hand, more than 22,000 voter registration applications in Kansas had been cancelled or deemed incomplete because of the failure to provide documents to the state.

We’re confident Judge Robinson, and appeals courts beyond, will see this effort for what it is. We’re also confident Kansans want free, fair, open elections, a process her decision could help guarantee.